Renaissance Learning just came out with a detailed survey about what school kids are reading. And while Harry Potter topped the list in some grades, J.K. Rowling hasn’t knocked out classic authors from Dr. Seuss to E.B. White and Harper Lee (although one might argue that these classics are being read because teachers are assigning them).
The comprehensive study (of “more than 3 million K-12 students in more than 9,800 schools nationwide who read more than 78 million books”) shows the books that seem to survive in popularity and, by their absence, the ones that are now collecting dust on the library shelves. I noticed that Nancy Drew and the L.M. Montgomery books are noticeably absent. So sad. I loved those. But John Steinbeck and George Orwell still haven’t been pushed aside.
The survey breaks reading choices down by grade and gender, geographical location and also looks at books chosen by the top 10 percent of students. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, for instance, is the top read among all forth graders, regardless of location, while in high school tastes diverge some. Students in the Northeast and West both liked Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called “It,” while Midwesterners preferred Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and those in the South opted for To Kill a Mockingbird.